Maine Human Rights Commission sues five school districts over transgender sports policy

AUGUSTA, Maine (WMTW) - The Maine Human Rights Commission has filed a lawsuit against MSAD 70 in Hodgdon, RSU 24 in Sullivan, RSU 73 in Livermore Falls, the Baileyville School Department and the Richmond School Department over policies regarding transgender students.

The Maine Human Rights Commission alleges the five school districts adopted a “hostile educational environment for gender-nonconforming students.”

The lawsuit goes on to state that gender-nonconforming students are harmed by these types of policies because they cannot be sure that they will be protected from discrimination when they participate in athletic competitions.

The commission wrote in the lawsuit that the harm created by these policies begins as soon as they are adopted by intimidating transgender students and making them feel unwelcome and unsafe in a public school.

In April, the MSAD 70 school district chose to align with the Trump administration’s Title IX policy as the Maine Department of Education faces potential consequences from the U.S. Department of Justice over noncompliance.

In September, Baileyville adopted a policy that bathrooms, locker rooms and athletic teams will be separated by biological sex and “no student of one sex shall be allowed to play on a team designated for students of the opposite sex.”

In October, RSU 73 passed a policy that its schools “recognize only two sexes: biological male and biological female.”

This comes as Maine and the White House have been at odds over this issue for close to a year, and the Trump administration has attempted to withhold federal funding from Maine over the issue of Title IX, according to our media partners WMTW.